Florida Blocks Heat Protection for Workers as Summer Approaches

Farm WorkersPhoto byTim MossholderonUnsplash

The Florida legislature has passes a bill prohibiting local governments from requiring protection from heat for outdoor workers.

The protections would state that employers provide water, shade, and breaks to workers, small measures that can mean the difference between life and death for workers laboring under Florida’s hot sun.

Workers picking crops, or doing other outdoor jobs such as roofing, landscape, and construction, need the ability to pace themselves and get rest, shade, and hydration with electrolytes as needed to prevent heat exhaustion, kidney damage, or even death.

The bill is being sent to Governor DeSantis for signature.

A separate private enterprise, "The Fair Food Program (FFP), a groundbreaking partnership between retailers, farmers, and farmworkers that has implemented the strongest, legally binding heat protocols in the nation on Florida’s farms, while bypassing the state’s Republican-controlled legislature."

As the heat increases due to global warming, the danger of working outdoors soars. At the present, only a handful of states (Washington, California, Oregon, and Colorado) have passed heat protections that extend to outdoor workers.

A Federal plan through OSHA to develop nationwide standards for protection has languished for two years. Meanwhile, the workers sweat it out.